2014Q3 Reports: SIGHUM
The ACL Special Interest Group on Language Technologies for the Socio-Economic Sciences and Humanities (SIGHUM)
is intended to provide a forum for CL researchers who are developing language technology for data from the socio-economic sciences
or the humanities (SSH). It also functions as a contact point for SSH stakeholders.
ACL SIGHUM stands officially since June 2012.
Organisation & Elections
The first SIGHUM elections took place in October 2013. The voting was anonymous and the process was organised by Caroline Sporleder and Andrei Beliankou, University of Trier, Germany. The following elected board officers are serving until October 2015:
- President: Antal van den Bosch, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands
- Secretary: Kalliopi Zervanou, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands
- Liaison officer: Marieke van Erp, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
The next election process will begin in September 2015.
Membership
SIGHUM is open to all interested parties and does not charge any membership fees. Members should be however active in CL and SSH research and applications, as indicated by their affiliation and publications. Membership involves registration and participation in the mailing list & the elections. The membership roster is maintained by the Secretary and is updated online at SIGHUM Members List. Membership currently stands at 110.
An overview of membership counts for the two years of the SIGHUM standing is given below:
- 2013: 75
- 2014: 110
Activities overview
LaTeCH workshop series: LaTeCH is the main annual event endorsed by SIGHUM and the venue for the SIGHUM annual research and business meeting. It aims to provide a forum for researchers who are working on developing novel information technology for improved information access to data from the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Cultural Heritage.
- LaTeCH 2013 was collocated with ACL 2013 in Sofia, Bulgaria. It was co-chaired by Piroska Lendvai (Hungarian Research Institute for Linguistics) and Kalliopi Zervanou (Radboud University Nijmegen) and with co-organisers Caroline Sporleder (Trier University) and Antal van den Bosch (Radboud University Nijmegen)